plant growth software

[choasforages]

why am i tempted to write an opensource application for remotly controlling something like a hydroponic or aeroponic growth system? and naming it GNUgrow. my friend already uses X10 and a macintosh to controll his houses lighting....it wouldn't take much to control halide lighting systems and water pumps, drainage, fertilizer mixing, waste water purging, lighting height, CO2 levels and other such things. why do i think this would be worthy? mabye cuase in addition to growing illegal plants, it could also be used to usher in a new era of verticla farming and deal with alot of potentiol food supply problems int he world

[Aloone_Jonez]

I don't know whether the mods should bin this or not as it's about software that will be use to grow illegal plants.

Isn't there any open source computer control software already availiable that you could base this project on?

[choasforages]

it could grow *anything*. i came up with the idea pondering how one could use technology to better grow plants that should be legal, but i soon realized that such control systems are typically expensive and i havn't seen any open source ones.

 last time i had them, hydroponic vegitables were delicious. ever had hydroponic hot house tomatos? put them with some good mayo, lettuce, and bacon, and you have a killer sandwich.

on a more technical side, im pondering what language to write these beast of a control system in, and how i interface with the *ponic hardware. i could go client server and make this beast virtually scalable to anysize project, like those found in theoritical skyscraper farms. to some dolt trying to grow himself some illegal plants...which arn't illegal in some parts of the world. im thinking thats how i would do it

on a side note, anybody recommending any software for playing dvd's on anything that doesn't have a license...linux cough cough, is violating some seroius laws, the DMCA comes to mind.
not to mention...im not about to stick a valid post about control systems in the bin just cuase they could be used to violate laws......

also, i am going to look into open source control software and see where i can go with it, but im probably going to base it off my friends x10 app called illumin8t

[adiment]

hah, I used to live in maryland...theres alot of weed there. Now I know where it comes from.

[Refalm]

I happen to know that some farmers use some kind of DOS program to control their vegetables.
Anyone know what these programs are?

[choasforages]

i don't grow illegal veggies....i just think it would be cool to use a computer to grow any kinda veggies...kinda like that german dude that built rockets "i only make sure the rockets go up, i have no say in where they come down"

[Aloone_Jonez]

Forget the software, how about the hardware?

You'll need to consider:

Heating, what fuel do you want to use? oil/gas/electricity.
If you choose gas you could use the CO2 to make your plants photosynthesize more efficiently.

Irrigation - pumps, rain water collection, recycling and filtering of used water, you also might want to add fertilizer to the water.

Ventilation - fans/shutters.

Insulation - you might want to add blinds or curtains to keep the heat in at night.

Lighting, are you going to install UV lamps?

PC interface - you'll need loads of electronics just to connect all of this hardware to your PC, I might be able to give you a hand here.

This is a very complex engineering project, what particle/technical experience to you have?

[choasforages]

embeded stamp...and relays...ive seen it done, on an industrial scale. you could control the water with electronic valves, it would be most effeicent to run said system off the grid. ventilation would be essiantial to any system like this, too much co2 cuases plants to die, also, since we are trying to be echo friendly, we could use some equipment to scrub co2 out of the atmosphere and use it boost the plants rate of growth.

also into the consideration for an effiecent setup would be a balancer on the lighting, so it can cover more area

[Aloone_Jonez]

I can see how too much CO2 could be a problem but  I wouldn't remove it all as it's required for photosynthesis and the plants will die.

By the way, is this one of those ideas you have that you'll probably never do you do you really plan to do this?

[choasforages]

depends......

[Orethrius]

You know about Smarthome.com right?  They have some REALLY cool home automation crap for not much money (compared to the average home automation vendor).

[choasforages]

i meant to concentrate it into the growth area......

[Kintaro]

I have a few old microcontrollers in the shed that are programmable (if you have an EPROM burner, which I do) and they have 128 outputs with control relays and a serial interface, you could write some simple code for those which would be able to handle such a task. Either you could write control software so they work as almost dummy terminals and just do what the serial interface tells it to, or you could write software on board that would handle the environment changes with its inputs automatically. Keep in mind you have about 16kbs of address space, put you could still program it into a serial input/output controller and have a real PC do the tricky work.

Me and my dad are considering putting all that junk on ebay, which could be used for such a project.

[KernelPanic]

I should program a PIC to be my friend.

[Kintaro]

I should program a PIC to be my girlfriend.